genius as he was, he was also a penman, a journalist; and
journalists and penmen will always look to him as their big brother,
the man in their own line of whom they are proudest. As devout
Catholics did not always worship the greatest saints, but the
friendliest saints, their own, so we scribes burn our cheap incense
to St. William Makepeace. He could do all that any of us could do,
and he did it infinitely better. A piece of verse for Punch, a
paragraph, a caricature, were not beneath the dignity of the author
of "Esmond." He had the kindness and helpfulness which I, for one,
have never met a journalist who lacked. He was a good Englishman;
the boy within him never died; he loved children, and boys, and a
little slang, and a boxing match. If he had failings, who knew them
better than he? How often he is at once the boy at the swishing
block and Dr. Birch who does not spare the rod! Let us believe with
that beloved physician, our old friend Dr. John Brown, that "Mr.
Thackeray was much greater, much nobler than his works, great and
noble as they are." Let us part with him, remembering his own
words:


"Come wealth or want, come good or ill,
Let young and old accept their part,
And bow before the awful Will,
And bear it with an honest heart."



DICKENS